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Engage! Expo NYCGDC 2010SXSW Interactive FestivalIEEE Virtual Reality 2010
 | M U S I C A N D S O U N D Making Sound Effects by Spencer Sternberg, posted 2/8/10 This article explores the recording and mixing processes of making sound effects for martial arts. From the sound of splintering watermelons to the quick movement of ferns through the air, it is clear to see that sound is not what it looks like |  | G A M E I N D U S T R Y IGF 2010: Strange Loop Games by Drew Sikora, Oli Wilkinson, posted 2/8/10 We talk to John Krajewski from Strange Loop Games, project lead on IGF finalist Vessel, nominated for Technical Excellence |
| G A M E I N D U S T R Y IGF 2010: Pocketwatch Games by Drew Sikora, Oli Wilkinson, posted 2/5/10 We talk to Andy Schatz from Pocketwatch Games, creator of IGF finalist Monaco, nominated for Design and the Seamus McNally Grand Prize |  | P R O G R A M M I N G Cube Map Rendering Techniques for Direct3D10 by Vincent Prat, posted 2/1/10 Unlike DirectX 9 which allows you to only render cube maps in 6 passes, DirectX 10 offers different ways to do it more efficiently: geometry shaders & improvements in the geometry instancing API offer single pass alternatives to cube map rendering. This article presents 3 algorithms as well as their drawbacks and advantages |
| Monday, February 8, 2010 | |
| David Perry to Deliver Keynote at 2010 Festival of Games | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 3:07:12 PM | |
 The Stichting Nederlandse Gamedagen (NLGD) today announced that industry icon David Perry will deliver a keynote speech during the 2010 Festival of Games. Perry is the founder of GAIKAI, a company that will launch a new form of gaming this year. He also founded Shiny Entertainment, and designed such classics games as Earthworm Jim, MDK and The Matrix.At the conference, Perry will not only demonstrate the streaming game technology, which will launch in 2010, and share his vision on the future of gaming. GAIKAI’s technology allows games to be streamed from a server via the internet into peoples’ homes. This does away with installing software locally, and even makes upgrades to user hardware a thing of the past. Even graphical intensive titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV are playable on any system with an internet browser. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Cafu Engine is now open source | |
| Posted by: Carsten Fuchs Software at 11:35:36 AM | |
 The Cafu Engine (formerly Ca3D-Engine) is now available to everyone as free software under the GNU General Public License!The source code as well as precompiled binaries are available at our Downloads page, and the new Developers page explains how to get started with the source code quickly. In addition to the compressed archives, the source code is also available directly from the Subversion repository. Learn more at www.cafu.de/news! Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 11:08:17 AM | |
 Welcome to another week of the GDNet Daily. I'm your host for this fantastic Monday morning, and it's critically important that I have your utmost attention. We will be reciting legally necessary safety instructions before we embark on our flight, so please retrieve the information card from the seat pocket in front of you and follow along.Before we go any further, you need to know that I really like Peter Molyneux. He's got a mouth on him, though, and that mouth is saying that Fable 3's reveal will make you "super pissed off." As other people have said, original Xbox Live is going away for some reason or another. To celebrate its departure from this mortal coil, Bungie plans to hang out with you in Halo 2 to celebrate the Ragnarok of homophobic 13-year-olds too poor to afford a 360. I'm also kind of curious how this is going to turn out, considering Microsoft is still selling Xbox Originals games through their 360 dashboard that use this Xbox Live service and will lose part of (or all of) their functionality after the switchover. If you liked Rise of the Triad like I liked Rise of the Triad, you'll be excited to know that someone finally put two and two together and is porting ROTT to the iPhone. Apparently the United Arab Emirates has been banning games that have an excess of religiousity for quite some time. I'm not sure if this is more or less defensible than the many nations worldwide that ban games for violence or mean words. Sega is actually making money. How did that happen? You might think it's because of Bayonetta or Phantasy Star Portable, but you're wrong. It's because of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, which outsold both games together and then some. In indie game news, the Assemblee competition results are in. Congratulations to everyone who entered, especially those who provided much-needed artistic content. I haven't played any of these games yet but are looking forward to doing so, especially BirdyWorld, which seems really unique. Natural Selection 2 is indie game of the year according to ModDB, and check out the crazy Hanna Barbera colour scheme of GunFu Deadlands. Before you go today, you might want to check in with Dr. Every Violent Act in the 2010 Superbowl Ads. He's not really a doctor, though, so don't take off your clothes. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| CopperLicht 1.0 Alpha Released | |
| Posted by: Nikolaus Gebhardt at 10:21:33 AM | |
| Ambiera just released the first version of their new 3D engine CopperLicht. CopperLicht is implemented completely in javascript and runs entirely in the browser, using WebGL (a new technology which is supposed to be supported in the next generation of web browsers) to render hardware accelerated 3d graphics. There is a demo available which renders a full Quake 3 level at playable speed directly in the browser. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 | |
| Scrolling Game Development Kit 2.1.3 Released | |
| Posted by: Benjamin Marty at 2:42:31 PM | |
 Scrolling Game Development Kit has been running on OpenGL (using the OpenTK wrapper library for .NET) for a couple releases now, and performing well. The latest update provides some minor enhancements and fixes.Details at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sgdk2/ Discussion at http://gamedev.enigmadream.com/ Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Friday, February 5, 2010 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 6:56:21 PM | |
| Entries from 1/29 - 2/5 Journal Land Pick of the Week Not dead... - This weeks post highlight was a no-brainer, as phantom's tome of a response to the DirectX vs. OpenGL debate is worth a read for anyone taking part in the ever-ongoing debate. Like, seriously - if you have an opinion one way or another then you must read this. It not only covers the DX vs. OGL debate, but also goes into why OpenGL is beneficial to developers in the long run over DirectX Wow we have quite the crowd this week! A warm greeting to new Journal Land citizens zarfius, Wavesonics, soulos, ozak, and Buttacup! Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| 2009/2010 State of Game Dev Survey Findings Revealed: iPhone Increase, Wii Decrease | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:05:47 PM | |
| Gamasutra sister service Game Developer Research has debuted its latest report, the 2009/2010 State of Game Development Survey, revealing among other things a surge of iPhone developers and a lull in those making games for the Wii. The 100 page report is a result of a survey of more than 800 video game professionals from North America and beyond who read Gamasutra, subscribe to Game Developer magazine, or attend Game Developers Conference. Those complete results are available as a 100-page report from Game Developer Research (www.gamedevresesarch.com), and more information from the survey is also available in the February 2010 issue of Game Developer magazine (www.gdmag.com). Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:01:28 AM | |
| I want to warn all of you out there in readerland: the combination of David Lynch, Werner Herzog, and Willem Dafoe is not nearly as great as you might think. Not bad. Just not great. Which, really, is about the biggest disappointment imaginable considering it's DAVID LYNCH AND WERNER HERZOG. Anyway hi video games! THQ is undergoing a bit of a reorganization with the re-branding of Rainbow Studios and Juice Games as THQ Digital Studios Phoenix and THQ Digital Studios Warrington (respectively). THQ is planning to create a "portfolio-wide community platform to connect consumers to all of THQ's core games." Approximately sixty people were laid off between the two studios as a result of the reorganization. May any of those impacted by this reorganization land on their feet and hit the ground running. These phrases may be redundant, but I'm pretty sure feet are a necessary part of the running process. Speaking of THQ, the company has also published an updated release schedule of their video game portfolio. Of particular note in this list for the next year or so is: Homefront, de Blob 2, and Red Faction 4 (with "robust online gameplay," so, you know, whatever that means). In the following year we have: Darksiders 2, Saints Row 3, and Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. There are some good games in that grouping. I wonder if these games will experience a shockwave of, say, a portfolio-wide community platform which could be usde to connect consumers to all of THQ's core games. It seems possible. Oh! Oh! Oh! SEGA is officially realizing that Sonic is probably an okay game when it's designed for 2D gameplay. The game was known as "Project Needlemouse" up until its official unveiling yesterday. It's not in the official statement, but I'm pretty sure a SEGA representative somewhere said "We can never repeat the genius of Sonic Adventure 1 for the Dreamcast." What's actually true is that Sonic 4, as it's being called, will be an episodic, downloadable game. Here's hoping it reminds us why we love the spiky little fella. I don't know normally cover this kind of stuff, but there is a The Who music pack coming to Rock Band in 'honor' of the group's imminent performance at the Super Bowl halftime show this weekend. The Who is playing the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Remember the good ol' days when the great bands of the 60s all faded away or broke up or something? Yeah. That was great. It prevented bands from doing things like this. I beat Mass Effect 2 last weekend; you guys best believe, even I liked playing a story-heavy game. It was good. Not without oodles of problems which I had no problem writing about, but well worth your time. This week I ordered a bunch of really cheap games like Pure, Fracture, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, and Jericho, so that's my playlist until Bioshock 2. Which is just a few days away. Crap. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Thursday, February 4, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 4:00:49 PM | |
| More studio closures/layoffs. This hasn't been a great week for industry jobs, I can tell you that much. I had thought previous Daily editors had covered all my bookmarked job loss stories but, sadly, this is not the case. Studio Deep Silver Vienna has closed, due to "the overall economic situation", although the 20 employees let go will receive pay through March. THQ has also cut some staff at studios Juice Games and Rainbow Studios, giving the two studios a new development direction that is targeted towards downloadable games. Best of luck to all the developers affected, and here's hoping that Trent does not have to continue this trend into tomorrow. iPad opinions round-up. It's been a week since the Big Reveal of Apple's iPad. Here are just a few takes on the new gadget from various industry sources around the 'net - Ngmoco's Neil Young is on Gamasutra saying "I think that Apple just found a way to get into the living rooms without having to build a dedicated game console." Epic Games VP Mark Rein is even more optimistic about the iPad, saying ""I really like the device and I think it's going to be great for gaming." Over at Nintendo, on the other hand, President Satoru Iwata remains largely unimpressed, saying "It was a bigger iPod touch." Then again, Nintendo by and large fails to be impressed by just about anything, so no real surprise there. Both Kotaku and Joystiq have also gone to numerous mobile developers for comment on the iPad. Finally, Gizmodo points out the that large amount of grumbling over the iPad is very similar to what was heard when the iPod was released in 2001. Something to think about.What are your thoughts on the iPad? Join the discussion in The Lounge. EB Games joins in fight for R18+ in Australia. No doubt eager for Conference registration: GDC early-bird over, PAX East sells out. This is your reminder to get over to the GDC website and register now if you want to take advantage of the early bird discount and save yourself a few hundred bucks. Also, PAX East has announced they've sold out... of 3-day badges. If you even want to be able to attend for a single day you best click on over to the registration page and snap up some single-day passes. Flame on! Wolfire revisits DirectX vs. OpenGL debate. The un-ending battle continues between the camps of DX and OGL - seriously there should be epic tales wrought from this stuff. Anyways, sharpen your weapons and head on over to the Wolfire blog to read the response to their original post that addresses some of the comments made by the D3D coalition. Or, if you're just a spectator, head on over to witness the carnage. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Holy crap, it's been 10 years since the Sims first came out, today, in 2000. This epic beast of a franchise continues to roll on strong, and EA Play label head Rod Humble is happy to say "the future of The Sims is going to be a lot of fun." Indeed, I have to buy the latest expansion pack and get back to my Sim persona. Happy birthday Sims! So, remember when I covered stories concerning Courtney Love's anger over the use of her deceased husband Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5? No? Here you go. So anyways turns out that now she's thinking Kurt would have kinda liked it. But she still hates it.  Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Game Investment Conference to Cover Investment Opportunities in Game Industry | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:45:02 PM | |
| Investors seeking to sort out the direction of the game industry over the next couple of years and developers looking to raise capital for their projects and studios should attend Game Path’s Game Investment Conference East (GIC East) Wednesday, April 28 at the Hudson Hotel in New York. Top industry speakers will provide insight on the future of digital distribution, social games and the viability of new platforms. Analysts will also recommend funding strategies for the new decade. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Karvonite 4.0 Beta 1 Released | |
| Posted by: MP Advanced at 8:09:05 AM | |
 Karvonite 4.0 Beta 1 has been released. Karvonite is a free persistence framework for the .NET Framework (including XNA) that lets you easily serialize/deserialize objects. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/karvonite Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, February 3, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 2:48:58 PM | |
| Codemasters have been subject to rumours regarding their poor performance for a while now - and yesterday IGN reported that as a result their US office would be shut, causing layoffs. Today Codemasters have denied the rumour, but have confirmed that 6 people have been laid off in the US office. UK-based Kuju Entertainment (operators of Zoe Mode and doublesix) will shut down their Philippines-based studio within the first 3 months of 2010. The studio has been open for little over a year - shortly before Kuju announced staff layoffs back in January. As Promit mentioned yesterday Namco Bandai are laying off 10% of its workforce. Take-Two, owners of Rockstar and 2K Games, have today confirmed plans to restructure their operations but have denied the rumours of a 20% layoff, saying that "there were no reductions made at studio level". Some good news, at least, for an increasingly battered game industry jobs market. After that depressing news on the jobs front, Sony are claiming that the sales of the PS3 are set to overtake the XBox 360; the PS3 has sold 31m units and the XBox 360 has sold 39m. Sony are claiming that they're playing the 10-year game and in that time they "don't think [XBox] will be around in 10 years". Really, Sony? Oh, and Social-game developer Zynga are opening up an LA studio. Read More.. | 10 Comments | |
| Gamer's Choice Sweepstakes for Voting in Indie Game Challenge | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:00:18 PM | |
| Public voting is underway for the Gamer’s Choice Award in the Indie Game ChallengeSM sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), and The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University. The Gamer’s Choice Award is one of more than $350,000 in prizes available to the 12 finalist teams announced today in the Indie Game Challenge. Visit www.indiegamechallenge.com between now and midnight CT, Feb. 18, to learn more about the 12 finalists and to vote. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Project Darkstar Goes Dark | |
| Posted by: John Hattan at 11:34:18 AM | |
 As part of Oracle's acquisition of Sun, Project Darkstar, Sun's open-source MMORPG server technology, is being dropped.The entire project has been moved to github and will now live on as a community-updated project. Details are in this forum post. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Irrlicht 1.7 Released | |
| Posted by: Nikolaus Gebhardt at 9:02:29 AM | |
| The popular open source 3d engine Irrlicht has been released in version 1.7. New features are Geometry shaders, Multiple Render Target (MRT) support, possibility to access texture mipmaps and to provide custom mipmaps, support for Ogre .mesh format animations, NPK (Nebula device archive) file format loading, Bzip2 and LZMA support as well as AES encryption, supporting external windows in Mac OS X and a lot more. Irrlicht can be downloaded freely from irrlicht.sourceforge.net and is released under the zlib license. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Tuesday, February 2, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 11:48:06 AM | |
| Yet another Tuesday, yet another Daily by me. To be honest with you, I've spent pretty much all of my free time since last Tuesday playing Mass Effect 2. It is a fabulous game, and I am ready to take a break now before going through a second playthrough. Right now, it's a Register for GDC GameDev.Net Daily. The early deadline is Feb 4, so that doesn't leave an awful lot of time for getting your pass. Hurry! Once again I get to start with bad news. Namco Bandai is laying off 10% of their company, about 650 people, on the heels of a substantial quarterly loss. Not only that, but Sony has laid off half of the staff at Studio Liverpool, the guys who bring you the WipEout games. I've seen some reports lately suggesting that overall job losses in the US are coming to an end; let's hope that is true. Back on the subject of GDC, they've announced new lectures. Looks like some fairly high profile people. The new announcements are design lectures, not technical ones, so go wild if that's your thing. Other additions include dramatically overpriced lunch packages. How overpriced? Forty US dollars per day. For box lunch sandwiches. Yeah. I didn't know they had automated video game trade in kiosks at some Best Buy and Walmart stores, but apparently it wasn't a very successful program. The company providing the kiosks, e-Play has closed up shop. Used game sales continue to be a pain in the neck of publishers like EA, who have never appreciated the idea that consumers might actually have rights. I suspect that e-Play now is closed because EA sent a trio of unlikely allies led by Commander Shepard to take out their home base orbiting Dysteria and defended by Blue Suns mercenaries. It's been obvious for a long time that companies and class do not necessarily go together. In honor (via mockery?) of the people in the game industry who work the longest hours of all on the most tedious job of all at the lowest possible pay rate, Sony is launching an eight episode reality TV show called The Tester. It's about clueless gamers performing ridiculous reality TV show challenges and fighting for no reason to earn their chance at a low paying job. Topping it all off are judges connected to Sony, notably God of war producer David Jaffe, pretending that they're not part of some kind of ridiculous mockery of gamers, industry, and the worst that TV (mainly MTV) has to offer. Thanks for that, Sony. Good to know you hate your gamers and your testing staff. Honestly, some days I'm embarassed that I own anything Sony. Penny Arcade has the best summary. Moving on, many of you are probably aware of DigiPen, one of the few dedicated game development schools around. (And one of approximately two that doesn't completely suck.) I'm a big advocate of "traditional" computer science degrees but it seems that DigiPen's had no trouble finding students. They are expanding their class size by a third, moving the campus to a larger ex-Microsoft building. Oh, and it looks like more Duke Nukem Forever footage has been leaked. It's difficult to even laugh at this point, but it's made easier by the fact that 3D Realms claims the franchise is still going strong. By the way, I will be at GDC for the entire duration, starting from Tuesday. So will many of the other GameDev staff members, and I imagine quite a few of you guys. What talks are you looking forward to? Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Monday, February 1, 2010 | |
| 12 Indie Game Challenge Finalists Named - Winners Announced at D.I.C.E. Summit | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:12:02 PM | |
| The 12 finalists in the inaugural Indie Game ChallengeSM sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), and The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University were announced today. Details about each finalist team and their games can be found at www.indiegamechallenge.com. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Ruby on Rails Training | |
| Posted by: SIQTRAINING at 3:40:16 PM | |
| SolutionsIQ Ruby on Rails training is a hands-on introduction into this exciting, open-source framework for the Ruby programming language. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Paris Game AI Conference 2010 Announces Keynote Speakers | |
| Posted by: Alex J. Champandard at 1:05:06 PM | |
| AiGameDev.com is proud to announce the first sessions of the Paris Game AI Conference 2010 program. In particular, invited speakers include Ken Perlin, a procedural animation expert, Andrew Stern, co-creator of FACADE and the iPhone hit TOUCH PET DOGS. The event also features a tutorial about reactive navigation by Mikko Mononen, Lead AI on CRYSIS. Tickets to the conference are now available! Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Festival of Games’ Game Conference introduces innovative format | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 10:05:25 AM | |
| The 6th Festival of Games’ Game Conference brakes the rules of its conventional format. Traditional one-hour speeches and panels will be accompanied by so-called “15-minute sessions”. The audience receives around 24 “speed-sessions” in total per day, which allows the attendees to follow the sessions of particular interest. The general idea of the Game Conference has also been modified. Instead of inviting authors, analysts and researchers, Game Conference 2010 at the Festival of Games hosts key people responsible for development and publishing of the most successful games. The Game Conference program is composed in cooperation with the Dutch game developers magazine Control. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:02:07 AM | |
| It's an incredibly busy Monday for the Daily, so I'm going to skip with the usual barrage of lies and half-truths and get right down to it. Blizzard would've wanted it that way. First off is the new set of Diablo III screenshots, featuring a lady throwing some fire and a dude punching something. In other Blizzard news, someone lied about StarCraft II system requirements. In indie news, the Global Game Jam has just wrapped up for this year. The Sydney division produced a bunch of stuff, and among other titles (with at least one developed by long-time GDNet members) is the insane GNILLEY, which you must watch the video of. Get your screamin' lungs ready. Nickel-and-diming FPS Battlefield Heroes now has werewolves and vampires to buy, but those probably won't make it to the new FIFA Online free-to-play EA endeavour. Nintendo's CEO is unimpressed with both the iPad and 3D movies, and maybe we should listen to him because Nintendo just outsold the NES and GameBoy with the Wii and DS. Speaking of sales, Steam games are selling like hotcakes coated in crack. The year 2009 marked a 205% sales increase over 2008, and Valve estimates that they have 25 million active users. Between this, the iPhone app store and the Xbox Live Indie Games sales numbers from last week, it seems like downloadable games are only going to continue to grow. Before you go today, Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson gave an incredibly rare interview - his first since 1989 - and you can read it. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Friday, January 29, 2010 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 6:08:18 PM | |
| Entries from 1/23 - 1/29 Screw it - no more cut off date. If you happen to post before I wrap up, congrats! It really pains me to see a cool update and ignore it for a week, maybe two. Journal Land Pick of the Week Digital adventures through the third dimension - shadowisadog ain't screwing around people, he's easily had the busiest journal all month - I see more blue days than gray days. What's he slaving away on? The engine to power his game Newton's Enigma. Congrats to you, shadowisadog, for winning the Journaler of the Month Award! Since I just made this up, you don't get any prizes, cept a nice pat on the back (that you'll have to give yourself) - but keep up the good work! A warm greeting to new Journal Land citizen yckx! Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:15:13 AM | |
| It's been a busy month of video games, you know? It's only going to get better from here too! Check out the Bad Company 2 beta/demo, as that is sure to be a game that will blow your pretty little socks off. Also of note is the crazy rad Predator footage from Rebellion's upcoming Aliens vs. Predator game. There's just a crazy amount of awesome ahead. Also: After Burner. And how about that Charlie Brooker? He sure is completely magnificent, isn't he? 2K Sports wants to pay you one million US dollars. The catch is that you have to be the first person to pitch a perfect game in Major League Baseball 2K10. Company Vice President Jason Argent says that their "goal is to celebrate and highlight Major League Baseball 2K10's superior pitching and hitting mechanics this season, while also giving one of our loyal fans the thrilling opportunity to be rewarded with a lot of money." In corporate finances we see Microsoft games having a great second fiscal quarter, Nintendo sees a year-over-year fall in profits, and Sony is looking forward to a profitable third quarter. The Game Developers Choice Awards is giving its "Ambassador Award" this year to Jerry Holkins, Robert Khoo, and Mike Krahulik of Penny-Arcade. The Ambassador Award is intended to specially honor people who "helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games and help further our art." Meggan Scavio, Event Director for GDC, said: "The Penny Arcade crew might be some of the most flippant, adorable game fans out there, [...] So obviously, we're delighted to recognize their efforts in providing a genuine voice and event for gamers, and working with both fans and developers in the Child's Play Charity to raise millions of dollars for a great cause." I have to say, readers, I'm really looking forward to going to GDC this year. It's still weird to realize that I'm actually going. For now, though, I'm really looking forward to playing some more Mass Effect 2, giving MAG a shot, and eventually partnering with my partner-in-crime Mike Stedman for some shenanigans in Army of Two: The 40th Day. Video games! Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Thursday, January 28, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:15:59 PM | |
| Emotiv: Your brain on games. As I mentioned before, the Emotiv EPOC headset was due to be released this past holiday season - this is the game controller you fit on your head and control software with your brain. Not much in the way of fanfare accompanied the launch, because at least as far as I've seen this is the first review of the headset. Sites like Kotaku posted their thoughts on early production models, but it's been almost two years since the headset was first shown to the public. As cool as this technology is, so far it seems to remain a very small niche market. Red 5 goes through "reorganization". Around 30 people were let go, some dismissed and others voluntarily, from the Orange County studio earlier this week. Red 5, founded by ex-Blizzard developers, has been working on an unannounced MMOG, and was also forced to shutter a Shanghai office last year. Further claims have surfaced regarding the longevity of the studio due to the possibility of bankruptcy, but Red 5 and its partial funder Benchmark Capital say this is not the case. The studio appears to have been saved at the 11th hour by an as-yet undisclosed buyer. [full story] Sid Meier to Keynote GDC, AI Summit detailed. In case you missed the news yesterday, legendary designer Sid Meier will be giving the design keynote at this year's Game Developers Conference. This will be epic, without a doubt. Do be sure to get in line (yes, there will be a line) as early as possible if you're one who likes getting a good seat. I will probably stand in the back for a few minutes so I can claim to have seen Sid speak, then catch the gist of it all in the myriad coverage that will follow from just about every outlet (including us, no doubt). Also, the complete list of AI Summit lectures has been posted, which is organized in part by our own Dave Mark - he and Mike Lewis will be providing coverage of that as well. If you'll be at GDC, do swing by the event thread and let everyone know! Will Wright lectures in NYC Feb 17th. If you're within reasonable travel time to NYC you may want to check out Will Wright's upcoming presentation "Why Games are (Good) for Learning". It sounds like a topic anyone interested in serious games should check out. Tickets appear to be free, however, so I would recommend attending just cause Will Wright gives great lectures, no matter the topic. Either way, I'll be there so you'll be hearing about it. Project 72: An iPhone game made in 72 hours. The title says it all. Check out this iPhone project, which was documented from start to finish. It's not all very in-depth but does a great job at covering the process. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Chris Taylor takes you on a tour of Gas Powered Games, hard at work on Supreme Commander 2. "I optimized the boonnness!!" Check out some cool tech that procedurally creates building interiors for large cityscapes. Where was this for GTA4?!? Hopefully, as Kotaku predicts, Crysis 2 will indeed take advantage of this. Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Call for Papers: 2010 Game Education Summit (GES) | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:32:08 PM | |
| The 2010 Game Education Summit, a conference where academics, policymakers and industry insiders discuss curriculum development, technological advances and teaching methodology in game education, will be hosted by the USC School of Cinematic Arts on June 15-16 in Los Angeles. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 11:56:27 AM | |
| Is it only Wednesday? It seems like the weeks are getting longer. Blitz 3d: Blitz Games' CTO Andrew Oliver is a fan of 3d games. Last year at the Develop Conference he did a talk about Invincible Tiger, their 3d game - back then people were skeptical of the technology, believing it to be a little too gimmicky. Gamasutra are running an interview with the very man - and yes, he still believes that 3d is the next step. Having just bought a 1080p HD TV myself, I think I'll wait for a while before I start worrying about 3d. I suspect that many others will as well. PS3 cracked: The PS3 was cracked the other day by iPhone Jailbreaker George Hotz - today he's published the exploit on his blog (which I won't link, but it's not hard to find if you're that way inclined). The PS3 was the last major console to remain uncracked, staying that way for over 3 years. The hack is said to be 5% hardware, 95% software and allows full access to the machine. While good news for home brew game development on the machine, it unfortunately it opens up the door for cracked games on the machine. This can't be good news for Sony or game developers on the PS3. Update: I should clarify that the PS3 isn't fully hacked at this stage as Sony have built in several layers of security which are uncracked, but it's looking like it'll now be just a matter of time. iTablet: Apple have done fairly well keeping this under wraps but it seems that the big announcement by Apple tonight may be the unveiling of the iTablet/iPad. Web 2.0 entrepreneur Jason Calacanis has been twittering about some alleged details, including an alleged port of FarmVille. If this is true, it could be an interesting device for game developers to pick up and work with - it's certainly got EA's Peter Moore excited. We'll find out later how reliable this information is. Indie Wonderland: Three veteran developers from Lionhead have broken away to found their own independent studio, Indie Wonderland. The developers have previously worked on Lionhead's flagship titles Black & White and the Fable series. The studio intends to target the iPhone and iPod Touch as their first ventures. Ubisoft DRM: Ubisoft are introducing a new Steam-like DRM system that requires an internet connection and a Ubi.com account. The system removes the need for disc-based authentication and allows, like Steam, multiple installations of the same software. Read More.. | 13 Comments | |
| Legendary Developer Sid Meier to Present Keynote at Game Developers Conference 2010 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 10:55:47 AM | |
 Sid Meier, the Director of Creative Development and co-founder of Firaxis Games, will bring to bear over 25 years of experience in game design in the opening keynote address at the 2010 Game Developers Conference® (GDC). Best known for his work designing the genre-defining Civilization strategy game franchise, Sid Meier will present a keynote entitled "The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong)." In this rare address, Meier will describe how real-world, historical and mathematical facts cannot form the foundation of a successful game design. Instead, Meier will argue, the driving force of a game's design should be the psychology of the player. The keynote address will take place Friday, March 12 at the Game Developers Conference, which runs from March 9-13 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. In his keynote, Sid Meier will draw illustrative examples from his canon to illustrate how the complexities of human psychology can inform game design more than the laws of logic, physics, or algebra. In this development model, egomania, paranoia and delusion become part of the designer's toolkit, as the player's perception becomes the real reality, connecting gameplay to the player's psychological experience. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, January 26, 2010 | |
| Third Annual Independent Games Festival Mobile Announces Finalists | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:52:43 PM | |
| The 2010 Independent Games Festival Mobile (IGF Mobile), an event that celebrates innovation in games for Apple's iPhone, other cell phone and smartphone operating systems (OS), Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation Portable, and other handheld devices, has named the finalists for its third annual competition, with a host of outstanding portable titles showcased this year. This year's IGF Mobile marks a record number of entries with 170 titles submitted for the competition, up nearly 65 percent from last year's total, which itself was double over the previous year. The finalists for IGF Mobile will compete for $5,000 in prizes, including specialized awards for art, design, audio, technical prowess, and iPhone game creation, as well as the IGF Mobile Best Game award. Some of the notable titles nominated for this year's IGF Mobile Awards include iPhone games such as double nominee, Tiger style's Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor, downloadable games for Nintendo's DSi including Powerhead Games' Glow Artisan, and promising titles from a host of worldwide indie developers, from England's Studio FungFung through Finland's Secret Exit and beyond. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 8:37:35 AM | |
| I have to write this Daily quickly, because if I take too long the store will run out of stock of Mass Effect 2, I imagine. And I can't very well have other people stealing my Mass Effect 2. I wasn't really going to buy it today, but apparently it's the greatest Bioware game of all time. And Bioware has made a lot of ridiculously great games. Don't worry though, because I've got my priorities straight and it's time for an I Should Geth Going Soon GameDev.Net Daily. They say it's good to be king, and right now Apple is king. Quarterly profits are up 32 percent year over year, iPhone sales have doubled, and quarterly revenue was $15.68 billion. That's pure, beautiful cash in Apple's pocket. And since they're all set to announce some major new hardware tomorrow, most notably the Apple tablet computer, there's probably a lot more cash coming in. I'm buying one for work purposes, probably. The rumor is that there's a big gaming push right out of the gate, and EA is involved. It looks like there's going to be some rosy Q1 earnings reports coming out of Apple too. Namco's certainly enjoying the party, with 23 million downloads of their products on iTunes. It seems that viewership of Spike TV's Video Game Awards is down this year. About 647,000 people watched the broadcast, which is pretty pathetic. I'm not entirely sure, but my theory is that no one is watching the show because it's a blatant marketing push, punctuated by a bunch of morons on stage and awards that are a load of bull. Just a guess. You may remember some time back that Microsoft release a Dashboard update that disabled all third party memory units for the Xbox 360, forcing everyone to buy the hideously overpriced official unit. Although clearly a dick move, it's also fairly standard practice in the console industry to skim money this way. Naturally, a suit was filed immediately, and Microsoft has just moved to have it dismissed. I have a suspicion that, like most major cases, this will all end up quietly handled behind closed doors. Nobody will benefit from the results except the lawyers and possibly a few executives at the companies, and console manufacturers will continue to shaft consumers. And yet I've got both an Xbox 360 and a PS3 in my living room. I'm not very good at voting with my wallet. Oh, and it seems that Microsoft just can't catch a break; a class action suit has been filed claiming that their Points system is a rip-off. On the other hand, this particular attorney sounds a little bit off the beaten path, if you catch my drift. Sure it hasn't got the kind of wild success stories that iTunes and the iPod/iPhone empire have created, but it seems that at least a couple people on Xbox Live Indie Games (that's XNA!) are doing pretty well for themselves. Of course if you go by certain people on our forums, this is patently ridiculous because Real Game Developers (tm) only use C++, for the intense performance that you apparently automatically get. Others are too busy actually getting things done to post in these discussions. Me? I inhabit the bizarre purgatory where I have to make all this junk work together. GamaSutra's also got an interesting opinion piece up: Is It Time To Start Pre-selling Games? As the piece explains it, "A pre-sale is the purchase of the rights to a project for a certain territory and duration, prior to the project being made." The idea is to bring over some of the economic model that drives other entertainment industries (specifically movies from the sound of it), and build more innovative content this way. I'm not really equipped to discuss the merits of the piece, but it sounds interesting enough. Summing up the amount of Mass Effect 2 discussion today is a big job, actually. So I'm going to do it rapidfire: ME2 for Xbox 360 on Metacritic -- Score is 97 at the time of writing. Mass Effect 2 DLC plans -- Bioware's fighting back against used game sales by restricting access to an online content network. Free for new buyers, $15 for used. Joystiq review of ME2 -- "The resulting concoction is the best game BioWare has ever made and the best action RPG in history." Interview with lead producer Adrien Cho -- Lots of talk about how feedback and critiques were handled. Mass Effect 2 Video Review by GameTrailers -- Personally I like how GT handles reviews. I think the coolest thing about the new game might be that it reacts in some way to every decision you made in your first game, via save-file import. I'm going to go run out and buy the game right now, a condition I call "The Trent Effect". Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Monday, January 25, 2010 | |
| Carolina Games Summit 2010 Scavenger Hunt Goes Live | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:11:22 PM | |
| Beginning today, in anticipation of the 5th Annual Carolina Games Summit on Feb 6th, The Escapist, media partner and platinum sponsor of the event, is hosting an online scavenger hunt with five prize packages from Dust-Off, Vibras Five.One, Hampton Inn, PNY, and mygamepax.com, totaling over $3,000. The grand prize packs include one night in the official hotel, Hampton Inn. All five prize packs include tickets to the Carolina Games Summit and a selection of items from the official cleaning product provider Dust-Off, an official video card from PNY and an official 5.1 channel audio headset from Vibras Five.One. In addition mygamepax.com will customize one of their products for each of the winners. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
